Oddly enough, you agree.

Her words take a second to penetrate through your haze of drowsiness, but you find yourself nodding. “...Yeah. Sure. Why not?”

Carmen beams at you as you get up slowly and follow her down the hall. The ladder in the hallway is down, so you can tell she was already considering going up there. You climb up slowly and open the roof latch, trudging onto the old steel. It creaks a little, but it seems like it’ll hold up your weight.

Carmen comes out after you and exhales loudly as she looks out. Streetlights are long since dead, but without the light pollution the moon and stars are blazing brightly in the night sky. Strong breezes roll through every once in a while, making leaves rustle.

There wasn’t anything out here at the moment, just like before. But you kept your handgun on you just in case. You sit at the edge of the roof and sigh into your scarf, looking out at the mutated world. The far away skyscrapers in the city are ringed with thick tree trunks, no doubt being swung on by devolved howlers and the like.

Carmen sits down next to you, knees drawn up to her chest. She frowns at you as you stare out at the horizon.

“What is it?” you ask.

She blinks. “Nothing. I just… isn’t that uncomfortable?” she says this as she points a delicate finger at your head.

You blink as well. “Oh. Yeah. Honestly, I spent so much time with it on, because of the pollen winds… guess I just forgot to take it off.”

You grab the edge of the goggles and pull them up over your head, and you realize just how blurry they were when the world snaps into much greater clarity. Carmen watches you intently, chin in her hands as you unwrap the scarf and finally pull it off, shaking your hair loose.

“Whoa!” she says loudly, before clamping a hand over mouth.

You raise an eyebrow at her - a gesture she can finally see - in response to her wide-eyed stare.

“You alright?” you ask.

She takes her hand away slowly, cheeks a little red. “Sorry, I just… you look a _lot _different than I thought you would.”

You realize with a start that this is the first time the girl has seen your face. Of course she hadn’t, you were wrapped up like an Arab in the desert the whole day.

“Am I that ugly?” you ask, finding a small smile playing on your lips.

“Definitely not,” she says. She blinks and her face gets a bit redder. “Sorry. No, I just… you look a lot younger than I expected. I thought you’d be around my dad’s age, but you’re… you only look a little older than me. How old are you, really?”

“...25,” you say eventually.

She puts a hand over her mouth again. “Wow. You… you’re young. Way younger than I thought.”

“Yeah?” you retort. “Well, how old are you, then?”

She scrunches up her face and sits a little straighter. “I’m 20 now.”

“And I’m really young?” you chuckle.

She frowns at you. “Ok, well, normal 25-year-old guys aren’t out in the wilds for an entire year. Where did you even learn how to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Survive. I’d be dead if I were alone out here for a day, much less a year. How’d you get so good at it?”

You hesitate. “I… was taught.”

“Must’ve been one hell of a teacher.”

“A bunch of teachers,” you correct. “And yeah… I suppose you could say that.”

She rubs her feet together slowly. “Is that why you’re going to Trafalgar? To find them?”

You scowl. “No. They’re gone.”

“Then… what’s in Trafalgar?”

“Nothing,” you say simply. Which is exactly what the hell I’ve been looking for.

She shakes her head again. “I can’t imagine being out here on my own. I never have been.”

“Yeah,” you say. “I figured. No one who’s been out here before would wear an ankle-length skirt in the wilds. Ever.”

She scowls. “Didn’t think I’d crash.”

“What were you even doing out here anyway?”

“I wanted to see it,” she said quietly. “What it was like. Just our luck we got run down… and that you found me. Hopefully we can get back to my camp soon… you’ll like it there. We have food, good shelter. Hot water sometimes, too.”

You try not to sigh at that thought and instead watch Carmen’s cute, almost elvish face in the moonlight. The thought of the dead cavemen flashes through you head annoyingly.

“If we’re heading to your camp,” you say, “it’ll take a while. Few days. We’ll run into more cavemen.”

She looks at you oddly.

“Which means,” you continue, “that I’ll be killing them.”

Her face turns red. “I didn’t mean to–”

“I understand that you’re not used to seeing this kind of thing,” you interrupt. “This kind of ****. But if I need to kill them, I will. When that happens, you need to follow what I say and be smart. Trust me. Ser listo.”

“Ok,” she says quietly, then frowns, looking up at you again. “¿Hablas español?”

You blink. “Uh, yeah.”

“I didn’t know you were Latino!”

“I’m not,” you clarify. “I just… picked it up on the road. Since this started.”

She smiles and shakes her head. “I think you’re the only person I know who learned a new language since the fucking apocalypse… who taught you?”

Your eyes narrow. “He’s gone now.” You see her regret asking the question and quickly follow it up. “And what about you? Where are you from?”

“Here,” she shrugs simply. “Dad was originally from Brazil. Moved here before I was born.”

“Portuguesa?” you ask.

“Sim,” she says with a cute smile.

It hits you then what Carmen had to have gone through to get here. When the bombs dropped you were already twenty, in college and more or less an adult. But Carmen… if she was that old now, then she would’ve barely been fifteen when this whole thing started. She’d grown up in the apocalypse.

You realize you’re still staring at her and clear your throat. “You can get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

She looks at you skeptically and then out to the empty neighborhood. “Not really much to watch, don’t you think?”

You look out at the empty moonlit night and can’t help but agree with her. Nights like these were a rare luxury - very fucking rare, in your experience - but they were known to happen.

“We could just stay out here?” she says.